Tech
How green is your online life?
From the manufacturing of our favorite devices to using them for social interactions, our digital lives can have a big climate impact.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
Parrots may offer clues to how our intelligence evolved
Studies of the brainy birds’ abilities to use tools, solve puzzles, speak words and more may teach us about how our species got our smarts.
Explainer
Technically Fiction
Space
Spacecraft need an extra boost to travel between stars
Star Wars makes space travel look easy by breaking the laws of physics. Off-screen, the technology for spacecraft to reach other worlds doesn’t exist yet.
Profile
Animals
Magic helped this researcher trick birds for research
At the National University of Singapore, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin looks at how magic can help us understand animal intelligence.
Features
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Parrots may offer clues to how our intelligence evolved
Studies of the brainy birds’ abilities to use tools, solve puzzles, speak words and more may teach us about how our species got our smarts.
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To ‘green’ AI, scientists are making it less resource-hungry
Energy demands of ChatGPT and similar AI tools can threaten Earth’s climate. So researchers have begun redesigning how to run data centers and build AI.
More Stories from the November 1, 2024 issue
- Humans
Common high-school textbooks promote unscientific views on gender
Inaccurate descriptions of sex and gender may lead to sexism or prejudice toward people who don’t seem to represent gender norms.
- Animals
Hibernating bumblebee queens can survive days of watery submersion
Hibernating queen bumblebees survived accidental submersion, leading researchers to discover their surprising resilience to flooding.
- Fossils
Stunning trilobite fossils include never-before-seen soft tissues
Well-preserved fossils from Morocco help reveal the weird way trilobites ate and perhaps why these iconic animals went extinct.
- Health & Medicine
Period blood could help diagnose diabetes and other illnesses
A new test for diabetes is the first diagnostic tool based on period blood. But it may be just the beginning.
- Animals
Chimps and bonobos recognize familiar faces even after decades apart
Chimpanzees and bonobos may boast the longest social memory of any animal besides humans.
- Physics
Experiment: Making music with bottles
In this study, we investigate how the volume of air inside a bottle affects the pitch of the musical notes it can create.
